New Wave for the New Week #21

Cover of Mood Swing

Boulder, Colorado's contribution to the New Wave scene, The Nails, are another one of those one-hit New Wave wonders. They were the band that gave us the wonderfully salacious, just-this-side-of-vulgar "88 Lines About 44 Women," a song that has become something of a staple of retro New Wave playlists over the past two decades.

Propelled by an insistent bass line and what sounds like a pre-programmed Casio keyboard rhythm track, "88 Lines About 44 Women" is exactly that: a series of descriptive couplets about the women in the singer's life. Some seem forced to keep the rhyming scheme in place, but most are skillfully written, funny, and so descriptive that you may find yourself saying "I KNOW a girl like that!" Indeed, back in my college days, it was something of an amusement to come up with our own "88 Lines" couplets about the women we knew.

There never was a proper promo video for the song, although one of the original band members, singer Marc Campbell, created his own clip for the song just this year. You can see his creation on The Nail's official website here. For the purposes of this post, since there was no clip at the time, you can listen to the song here:



The Nails were not without videos, though. Their wonderful 1984 album Mood Swing spawned two clips, one for "Home of the Brave" and this one, for their spot-on cover of The Hombres' 1967 hit "Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)." The Nail's version uses only the parenthetical title, "Let It All Hang Out," but otherwise stays true to the original.

So here is The Nails' video for "Let It All Hang Out," and, as a bonus, a chance for you to hear the original to compare. Enjoy!